GameSpot called Eternals 'a gorgeous experiment.' The experiment failed peer review.

Ah, GameSpot. Dispatched to evaluate Chloé Zhao's marriage of arthouse cinema and content pipeline, their critic returned with the verdict 'a gorgeous experiment' — a phrase that evaluates nothing, comme un sommelier describing corked wine as 'an ambitious fermentation.' One does not call an experiment gorgeous, mon ami. One asks whether it worked. Complimenting a failed experiment on its cinematography is complimenting the Hindenburg on its typeface.

Observe the architecture of cowardice. The film 'doesn't feel like any other movie in the MCU, which both helps and hurts it' — a sentence that cancels itself out mid-breath, a critical opinion with the net content of decaffeinated air. Every criticism in this review arrives chaperoned by a compliment, like a scandalous aunt escorted through a wedding. The strong points, we are told, 'outweigh the missteps.' Outweigh them on what scale, monsieur? There is no score. The weighing was conducted in private, the instruments were never shown, and the laboratory notebook is blank. C'est de l'alchimie, pas de la critique.

Then history performed its own peer review. Eternals became the first Rotten-rated film in MCU history, limped to a Metascore of 52, and earned a B CinemaScore — the lowest ever recorded for the franchise, from an audience so agreeable it once gave an A to a movie about a talking raccoon. And yet GameSpot prophesied this film would 'stand the test of time better than any of its predecessors.' The test of time took one weekend. The film about immortal beings could not survive until Thanksgiving. Even Sartre would call that a rough opening.

Here is the sleight of hand, and it is the oldest one in the corporate press: praising ambition instead of execution. It is applauding the menu instead of tasting the food, framing the receipt instead of the painting. A critic who grades Disney on intention will never write a negative review, because intention is the one thing a two-hundred-million-dollar marketing department always provides in abundance. This is not culture, this is commerce. I award this review a 3/10 — one point, généreusement, for each hour of the film its author endured without once committing to an opinion.